If you’re a Fly client, you know by now that we love Barre. We recommend it to all our clients, we practice Barre ourselves at least three times a week and we use it to train for the coveted pole tricks that we’re working on. If you don’t take classes with us, most likely you know someone or have seen ads for Barre classes. You’ve probably wondered what we mean by “embrace the shake” and why Barre goers have nicknamed themselves ‘Barre-bies’. Here are all the reasons why we love Barre and what it can do for you!
1. Low Impact Workout: Sore joints? Ballistic jumping hard on your knees or back? No problem, Barre doesn’t require plyometrics to get results. Barre combines Pilates and Ballet movements that focus on toning and strengthening muscles rather than harsh jumping or rigid movements. Barre incorporates a great deal of stretching and muscle strengthening that alleviates pressure or uncomfortableness that some people feel in their joints from traditional conditioning workouts.
2. Full Body Workout: Barre workouts are a full body workout. Each class focuses on arms, abs, legs and glutes. The program incorporates minimal equipment such as 2lb weights, a Barre ball and resistance tubes that utilize your own body weight for resistance. We work a muscle group to fatigue by using small, isolated movements and intentional muscles pulses also known as isometric movements.
3. Flexibility Training: After we exhaust a muscle group, we stretch it. This helps prevent soreness and stiffness that can result from intense strength workouts. Stretching after targeting a muscle group allows us to stretch that muscle while it is warm and helps improve our overall posture, balance, range of motion and flexibility.
4. Toning Muscles While Losing Inches: People workout to have fun and release stress but, we also workout to feel healthier, be fit and stay looking our best. To become our healthiest selves, our bodies require that we are active and balance cardio, strength and flexibility training in our regimen. Barre increases your heart rate during the intense strength training, resistance training tones your muscles and the program allows ample time for stretching. A Barre workout will hit all the important aspects of fitness training. Barre also helps you maintain and gain lean muscle mass. The ‘after burn’ of a strength workout means that your body continues to burn calories at an elevated rate long after a strength training session. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn.
5. Barre for Aerial Fitness Cross Training: We LOVE Barre for our aerial conditioning workouts. So much of what we do on the pole, silks, hammock and trapeze requires strength, flexibility and isometric muscle movements. Barre helps us achieve active muscle engagement and flexibility moves. It’s one thing to be able to get into the front splits or middle splits on the floor, it’s another thing to actively engage those same muscles correctly and be able to hold them in the air while on a pole or in silks. By focusing on isometric movements and muscle engagement, we can train our muscles to actively move into the splits, or other flexibility aerial tricks, on their own. In our opinion, Barre is the best conditioning exercise we have found to compliment aerial sports.
Regardless of whether you are an aerialist or not, Barre offers a safe and low impact workout for people of all ages and any fitness level. The full body workout helps you tone and tighten key areas as well as focus on improving one’s overall balance, flexibility and fitness level.
Through Barre, the coaches and clients of Aerial Roots have checked off many of the seemingly impossible pole and aerial tricks as well as increased our flexibility!
The recommended Barre program is at least three classes a week and a healthy diet to achieve the best results.